Telephone subscribers have long desired to have a means to receive all calls made to them. As a result, answering services and the like have existed for a number of years. Historically, these answering services have focused on business as opposed to residential telephone users. While suited for their intended purpose, such answering services were also limited in that a caller could only leave a brief message to be written down by the answering service and later relayed to its intended recipient. The personal touch of hearing a "familiar" voice was therefore lost. Similarly, inflection or intonation indicating emotions such as anger, love, etc. could not be communicated. In addition, the accuracy of the message was directly related to the conscientiousness of the answering service. Finally, because the message had to be left with another person, there was no privacy.
Subsequent to answering services, portable answering machines were introduced. These machines allow incoming callers to record a message which may be left for a telephone subscriber. Although such systems address the privacy limitations of the prior art, they are nonetheless subject to equipment breakdown and they are expensive in that a single machine is generally required for each telephone number. In a business setting, these associated costs are often prohibitively expensive. Finally, in either a business or residential setting, aesthetics require that the answering machine be hidden or at least partially concealed. Problems with equipment failure and subsequent repair as well as cost have limited the usefulness of these machines. In addition, answering machines are not activated when the line is busy, i.e., off-hook. Thus, a caller can only leave a message when the line is idle. As a result, such machines lack utility for those persons who need their calls answered the most, i.e. persons who frequently use the telephone and do not wish to miss calls when their phone is in use.
In recent years, Voice Mail (VM) systems, also known as voice messaging systems, have become available. These systems handle calls that do not reach the intended extension user by recording the caller's message. Voice mail systems operate with most Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs), hybrid, or key telephone systems and allow users to send, receive, and redirect voice messages through office telephone systems and computers.
Voice messaging systems have the same advantages of an answering machine, but do not require a separate piece of equipment. Generally, the equipment to provide the messaging system is owned by the provider of the service. Both the subscriber to the system and all callers making calls to that subscriber may leave messages on the system. The subscriber may access the system from remote locations, which, in the case of answering machines, is not always possible. In addition, voice messaging systems allow the caller to leave a message when the called line is busy so as to allow the user to selectively save or erase messages. Voice messaging systems therefore allow a user to enjoy the advantages of an answering machine without the above-stated limitations and associated disadvantages acquiring, repairing, and otherwise maintaining an answering machine. In addition, more options and features are available on voice messaging systems. As readily seen, voice messaging systems have thus become exceedingly popular. Most businesses are now equipped with some type of voice mail service and long voice mail messages are routinely generated and received by subscribers.
One limitation of current voice messaging systems, however, is that they do not allow for a message recipient to listen to only a portion of a received message and respond. That is, if a long message is left for the subscriber with a number of points being made by a caller, it is sometimes difficult for the listener to remember each point and formulate a response once playback of the message is complete. While many voice messaging systems incorporate features for a user to replay, rewind, or fast-forward through a message, such actions are often cumbersome to the called party, especially when listening to a voice message on a cellular telephone while driving or in similar situations where note taking or complicated manipulation of the voice message is inconvenient.
Consequently, a need has developed for an automated method and system for voice processing wherein a subscriber may suspend playback of a stored message, generate a response and thereafter resume playback of the message. Such a method and system should permit the subscriber's responses, i.e., subresponses to be concatenated so as to generate and forward a single concatenated response.